In his commentary, Dr. João Ferreira Dias examines the growing struggle over religious authenticity and political legitimacy within American Christianity. Focusing on James Talarico and Adam Hamilton, he explores how progressive and moderate Christian voices challenge MAGA’s association of religious identity with conservative political allegiance. Drawing on Norris and Inglehart’s theory of cultural backlash, Dr. Dias analyzes how Christian nationalism mobilizes anxieties over social change while portraying inclusion as a threat to religious authenticity. He argues that connecting LGBTQ inclusion, economic affordability, and social protection to Christian obligations offers an alternative political interpretation of faith. Thus, the commentary highlights religious pluralism as essential to democratic citizenship and challenges claims of exclusive ownership over Christianity.
When Donald Trump described James Talarico as “beyond woke” and “an insult to Jesus,” he was claiming the authority to decide which political positions a Christian may legitimately hold. Talarico’s support for transgender people became grounds for questioning the authenticity of his faith. The accusation reveals a wider dispute over the political ownership of Christianity, in which disagreement with the MAGA movement can be presented as a departure from Christianity itself (Malcolm, 2026).
The emergence of Talarico and Adam Hamilton gives that dispute a particular significance. A Presbyterian politician and a Methodist pastor are drawing on their faith to articulate alternatives to MAGA, connecting Christian responsibility with inclusion and the ability of ordinary people to afford their lives. In doing so, they challenge an association between Christian identity and Republican allegiance that has acquired the force of a moral obligation for parts of the American electorate.
Christianity has, of course, sustained different political traditions in the United States. The Social Gospel and the role of Black churches in the civil rights movement belong to that history. What is at stake today is the public visibility and legitimacy of those alternatives in a political environment where the defense of Christianity is frequently invoked to justify resistance to social change.
The notion of cultural backlash developed by Norris and Inglehart (2019) helps explain this relationship. The expansion of liberal values can be experienced by socially conservative constituencies as the loss of a familiar moral order and of their own authority within it. Under these conditions, political mobilization draws strength from the promise to recover what has supposedly been taken away. The nation’s religious identity becomes part of that promise, giving changes in gender relations or the recognition of sexual minorities the meaning of a threat to the country itself.
Within MAGA Christianity, faith can therefore function as a claim to cultural precedence. The Christian is imagined as the rightful custodian of America, whose place must be restored against institutions and groups accused of displacing him. This gives political leadership a restorative mission: the recovery of a Christian nation whose authentic character is understood to precede, and take priority over, the choices of its increasingly diverse citizens.
But who is entitled to define that authenticity?
The attacks on Talarico and Hamilton show how theological boundaries can be made to follow political ones. Their support for LGBTQ inclusion has been used to question whether they qualify as Christians at all (Jenkins & Ashby, 2026). An interpretation of the duty to love one’s neighbor is treated as evidence that the person advancing it has abandoned the faith. The charge of being “woke” allows the substantive disagreement to be displaced by an accusation of religious illegitimacy.
Talarico and Hamilton contest that exclusion from different positions. Talarico advances a more explicitly progressive argument against Christian nationalism. Hamilton brings a more moderate approach, shaped by pastoral work across political differences. Their convergence lies in understanding Christian obligation as a reason to include people whom the cultural backlash identifies as a threat, and to address the material difficulties that restrict their lives.
This is where affordability becomes important.
A family unable to pay for medical treatment presents a moral question as well as an economic problem. The same applies to people whose wages no longer cover housing, or whose care responsibilities prevent them from earning enough to support their children. Connecting these circumstances with faith gives the commandment to love one’s neighbor a material consequence. Compassion acquires implications for the organization of public life, including the distribution of resources and access to essential services.
Talarico made that connection when he answered Trump’s attack by questioning policies that remove health coverage from sick people while granting tax reductions to billionaires (Malcolm, 2026). The response brings the debate back to the consequences of political choices. It asks what Christian responsibility requires when the people affected are poor or dependent on assistance, rather than allowing religious authenticity to be settled exclusively through positions on sexuality and gender.
Inclusion and affordability can thus form part of the same argument. A person’s dignity is affected by discrimination and by the inability to obtain treatment or maintain a home. For a moderate or progressive Christianity, both circumstances can create obligations towards the neighbor. This gives religious voters a language through which social protection and equal citizenship become coherent expressions of faith.
The democratic significance of this alternative depends on allowing that argument to remain open to disagreement. A progressive Christian claim to exclusive religious authenticity would reproduce the problem it contests. Liberal democracy provides room for religious convictions to inform political participation while requiring citizens to share institutions with people who reach different conclusions, including those who profess no religion.
Talarico and Hamilton matter because they make that possibility visible within Christianity itself. For voters accustomed to hearing that faith requires allegiance to the religious right, their interventions reopen a political choice. The Christian voter can support inclusion and policies that make everyday life affordable while understanding those commitments as part of a religious obligation. MAGA must then defend its political programme before an electorate whose faith it can no longer simply claim to own.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595841
As governments increasingly embrace artificial intelligence as a pathway to technological sovereignty and economic development, its ecological consequences demand greater scrutiny. In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Mayowa Solaja uses the concept of “algorithmic green grab” to examine how AI-driven infrastructure expansion may concentrate control over electricity, water, and land while disproportionately transferring environmental costs to vulnerable communities. Focusing on Nigeria’s digital ambitions, Dr. Solaja explores the tensions between populist promises of technological independence, corporate interests, ecological justice, and democratic accountability. Drawing on political economy and environmental justice perspectives, he argues that genuine digital sovereignty requires transparent resource governance, meaningful community participation, and equitable distribution of benefits. The commentary calls for integrating ecological responsibility into national strategies for AI development.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly perceived as a tool for national development, economic competitiveness and technological sovereignty. Governments are investing in data centers, cloud infrastructure and digital platforms, sometimes calling them critical to national independence in today’s competitive world economy. But the political rhetoric of “digital transformation” often clouds over the physical circumstances that make it feasible. AI requires electricity, water, land, minerals and wide industrial networks, large infrastructure. The seemingly intangible nature of this footprint therefore hides a more and more significant ecological footprint.
Global electricity consumption by data centers rose about 17 percent in 2025, and consumption by AI data centers grew by about 50 percent, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). It estimates the total electricity used in data centers could reach 950 terawatt-hours by 2030 – compared with about 485 terawatt-hours in 2025 (IEA, 2026). The numbers are not representative of environmental pressures caused by all data centers. They do, however, prove that digitalization is an emerging issue of energy governance and environmental responsibility.
This commentary develops the idea of algorithmic green grab as a way to think about the political-economic dynamic of the expansion of AI and digital infrastructure and its centralization of control over ecological resources, while also potentially shifting ecological costs to communities who have less influence over the decisions being made. It makes the claim that the politics of digital sovereignty requires a consideration of not only who owns data and technology, but also who controls the energy, water and land that supports them.
When Sovereignty Becomes a Political Promise
Digital sovereignty is a very appealing political idea. It offers governments better control of national data, technology infrastructure and strategic capacities, especially in an era of proliferating digital platforms and computing capabilities in the hands of large corporations, geopolitical power players. Such concerns are legitimate. Governments may be limited in policy options by relying on external technology vendors and also may be vulnerable to commercial and geopolitical risks.
Sovereignty may also be a political story, however, in which governments claim that technology investments are a national necessity that must be taken for granted. This is where it meets populism. A populist political rhetoric often creates a separation of a people or a nation and far away or strong forces threatening them. In digital policy, this difference can be harnessed by pushing backs against foreign corporations, international rivals or domestic middlemen for technological control.
The challenge that comes when the language of national empowerment hides inequalities within the nation. A data center can be in the country but not be owned, governed or be democratically accountable within the country. Likewise, the storage of domestic data does not equate with technological independence, and foreign investment does not equate with broadly spread developmental gains.
The notion of the algorithmic green grab is based upon the wider political-economic idea of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2003) and the critique of data colonialism formulated by Couldry and Mejias (2019). It expands on these insights by foregrounding ecological resources and environmental relationships that are involved in the accumulation of the digital. The issue is not just that corporations get data from societies, but that digitalization might exacerbate contests for electricity, water and land, and that benefits and costs of this development might not be shared equally.
It’s not a case of saying that all digital sovereignty projects are populist and environmentally destructive. Instead, it highlights a political risk: A technological solution perceived as a necessary means of national affirmation can become subject to checks and balances concerning its distribution and ecological impact, which can be interpreted as a threat to progress. The political is then a sub-genre of technological success.
Nigeria’s Digital Ambition and Its Ecological Test
Nigeria is an important example of this tension. The country’s digital development agenda increasingly focuses on domestic infrastructure, investment and innovation and technological capacity. According to the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation (2025), four data centers are being built in Lagos State in April 2025. The Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy (FMoCID) announced on August 31, 2026, the release of a National Digital Cloud Policy to facilitate investment, digital sovereignty and government transformation, including the development of the nation’s digital capabilities.
These are the good intentions of strengthening the position of Nigeria in digital economy. But there are questions that can’t be resolved based on investments or technology. How will any extra demand for electricity be met? How will water and cooling be controlled? How will land acquisition be evaluated, local infrastructure pressures and environmental risks be evaluated? Who is to gain economically and how will the affected communities be involved in decision making?
These are questions which would need evidence that relates to the project level, and it is too early to declare that, for example, reported facilities have already resulted in specific water depletion, electricity shortages or displacement. However, the lack of available, detailed and accessible environmental data would raise governance issues. Digital infrastructure should not be treated differently to other large-scale industrial projects for transparency and environmental assessment.
The Nigerian situation is another example of why it is important to differentiate ecological sovereignty from national sovereignty. A state can tighten its grip over the infrastructure but cannot guarantee equitable access to the resources on which this infrastructure depends. Algorithmic ecological sovereignty thus means the democratic and institutional power for governments and interested communities to shape the environmental decisions, resource allocation and accountability processes that support digital systems. It does not impose ecological justice as an outside constraint on technological independence, rather than a part of it.
From Digital Sovereignty to Ecological Accountability
Aerial view of a new AI hub and data center under construction on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, USA, on November 2, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.
The environmental implications of data infrastructure are not inevitable or uniform. They depend on technological design, energy sources, cooling systems, location, regulatory standards and institutional accountability. The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s account of water reuse in Quincy, Washington, describes a facility developed through collaboration between Microsoft and the city to reduce reliance on potable groundwater. Operational since 2021, the system offsets an estimated 138 million gallons of water demand annually (US EPA, 2023). Although this arrangement cannot simply be transferred to Lagos or other Nigerian locations, it demonstrates that infrastructure design and public regulation can influence the distribution of environmental costs.
Four Governance Principles Stand Out as Especially Significant
First, mandatory environmental transparency should accompany data-center development. Electricity usage, water needs, cooling solutions, emissions impacts and resource management plans should be made public by operators and relevant public agencies. This kind of data helps citizens, researchers and regulators assess the true costs of digital expansion.
Second, cumulative pressures need to be taken into account during environmental assessment. Individual facilities can meet regulatory standards, while the cumulative impacts of several developments can put increased stress on the existing electricity, water and land infrastructures. Assessment must therefore take into account project-specific impacts as well as the broader context of the ecological conditions of host communities.
Third, public incentives must be related to proven public value. Concessions, land allocations and infrastructure should be tied to quantifiable pledges in the areas of energy efficiency, responsible water use, skills development in the local community, environmental protection and community benefits. Investment is not an investment objective.
Fourth, there must be pathways for involvement of affected communities. Consultation should occur prior to making critical decisions, with information being available and mechanisms in place to raise concerns. This is not just a requirement of the procedures. It is at the heart of environmental justice, which has three dimensions: distributive, procedural and recognitional (Schlosberg, 2007).
These principles also offer a means to assess political statements regarding digital sovereignty. Citizens should be able to ask whether technological development bolsters collective control over resources, benefits communities in an equitable manner, and shields communities from environmental costs that fall unequally.
Conclusion
AI’s growth holds exciting potential for economic transformation, innovation and national development. But its environmental base requires a more critical comprehension of technology progress. Measuring digital sovereignty is not just about the placement of data centers or the amount of investments or even national cloud policies. It must also be evaluated in terms of governance of energy, water and land that digital systems rely on.
Algorithmic green grab points to the risk of new technologies re-producing the patterns of old forms of extraction and unequal development, but under the guise of innovation and national empowerment. Political pledges of independence subsumed into digital but not environmental accountability, risk digital sovereignty as a symbolic gesture rather than a substantive democratic state.
The question for Nigeria and other nations with aspirations to enhance their technology, then, is not whether or not technological advancement can be made at the cost of the environment. It is whether or not digital development can be structured to embed ecological resources, public responsibility, and community participation in technological sovereignty. What the societies that support the development of AI can and do say about who benefits, who is hurt, and whose ecological interests are considered will be as important for the future legitimacy of the development of AI as what algorithms can achieve.
References
Couldry, N. & Mejias, U. A. (2019). “Data colonialism: Rethinking big data’s relation to the contemporary subject.” Television & New Media, 20(4), 336–349. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476418796632
Europe’s migration politics in 2026 reveal a growing convergence between radical-right populism and mainstream migration governance. In this scholarly review, Shaza Khalid and Maryam Hameed examine how grievances over housing, living costs, education, and public services are increasingly reframed through migration-related narratives—a process they conceptualize as the “migrantization of grievance.” Analyzing the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, return hubs, reception conditions, and the October 2026 protest wave, the authors argue that populist influence extends beyond electoral success into institutional policymaking. Through a structural, postcolonial perspective, they further connect Europe’s contemporary border externalization policies to historical interventions and asymmetrical relationships with the Global South, highlighting the tensions between migration control, democratic accountability, and fundamental rights.
By Shaza Khalid & Maryam Hameed*
This review examines the intersection of migration politics in Europe in 2026, focusing on populist radical-right agendas, mainstream policy convergence and Europe’s external relations. It argues that migration functions more as a screen onto which housing, cost-of-living and generational grievances are projected than as the root cause of the current unrest.
The review considers three developments: the Pact on Migration and Asylum and the Returns Regulation, which institutionalize deterrence, speed up returns and establish offshore ‘return hubs’; reception conditions for migrants, which remain far from uniform; and the protest wave that spread across France, Italy, Spain and beyond in October 2026. It situates these developments within a structural, postcolonial interpretation of Europe’s role in the Global South, linking the 2011 intervention in Libya, instability in the Sahel and the outsourcing of border control to Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania. It shows that setting the agenda, rather than holding office, is key to a populist movement’s success, and identifies gaps in research on populism and migration governance.
From Paris to Marseille, from Milan to Madrid, from Lisbon to Tirana, demonstrations spread in the second half of October 2026 across Europe. 1,314 people were arrested in nationwide protests in France just on Saturday, October 24, 2026, over the cost of living and the education system (CBS News/AP, 2026). Italy deployed more soldiers in Milan after looting and clashes, and the Italian government announced harsher punishments for minors (Barry & Associated Press, 2026). These scenes were quickly turned into an immigration story and Al Jazeera (2026) reported that “violence imagery is being used to back anti-immigration claims online, despite the root causes of these.”
This review begins where the gap left by protesters and the public discussion about what they mean lies. Insecurity is so diffuse that it can be filled with a ready-made explanation, and this is what populist actors do. Populism studies have long demonstrated that radical-right parties do well when they offer a ready-made explanation for diffuse insecurity (Mudde, 2007). The present moment implies another step: that unrelated grievances are being narrated in the language of migration, not only by populists but by growing numbers of mainstream governments.
The article proceeds in three steps. First, it examines the agenda of the radical right and how mainstream parties have embraced it. Second, it looks at the new policy design from 2026 and the reception conditions it promises and provides. Third, it raises questions that the prevailing discussion neglects: the historical and current position of Europe in the political economies from which many migrants originate. The argument is structural and does not attribute any instability in other parts of the world to any one European policy. It is also deliberately conceptual, inviting conceptual reflection as well as empirical material.
Populism, Civilizationism, and the Migrantization of Grievance
The populist radical right is a combination of nativism, authoritarianism and populism, in which “the people” are pitted against “elites” and “culturally threatening outsiders” (Mudde, 2007). Much of the modern right in Europe views this opposition in terms of civilizations, not just ethnic ones, and sees itself as a Christian or liberal Europe against Islam, as Brubaker (2017) notes. This is why the hostility to migrants can be supplemented with the claims to protect women’s rights, secularism or “European values.”
This review suggests that a similar process can be called migrantization of grievance. Housing shortages, stagnant living standards and pressure on public services are real and politically potent. When political entrepreneurs blame them on migrants, they are expressed in terms of membership, border control and issues that can be “solved” by visible state action. After that, mainstream parties use that translation to regain the voters, which in turn gives it respectability. Hans Kundnani has pointed to the influence of far-right ideas on identity, immigration and Islam, with the center-right becoming more like the far right (Ridgwell, 2024). This creates a vicious circle where populist agenda-setting outpaces populist office-holding.
Far-Right Objectives and Mainstream Convergence
This kind of agenda has strong grassroots support. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieved its highest result in Ipsos polling up to that point, at 28 percent in August 2026, while other polls in October showed the same result (International News and Views, 2026). In early 2026, France’s National Rally (RN) was reported to be getting more than 30 percent of the vote, and a French restriction on migration coincided with a surge in the far-right vote share, with housing problems and public service stress being key factors in the government’s thinking (Vision of Humanity, 2026). These are poll numbers, not election results, so the volatility of these numbers needs to be recognized.
The content of the agenda is not limited to restrictions. The AfD advocates “remigration” and was deemed an extremist organization by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (The Conversation, 2026b). In Italy, a citizens’ initiative called “Remigration and Reconquest” garnered more than 50,000 signatures to initiate a discussion in parliament, including incentives for some migrants to leave and expanded deportation policies (Newsweek, 2026). The common thread is that people who are already residents, including second-generation citizens, are potentially removable, rather than controls being limited to who can enter.
Yet convergence is uneven. There is disagreement about Russia and Ukraine within the far right, but there is agreement on migration (Ridgwell, 2024), making migration a unique bridging issue for far-right parties. There is a spectrum of interventions, from restrictive policies to cordons sanitaires, with mixed outcomes. The case for studying convergence rather than party competition is that the policy shifts likely to have the greatest impact in 2026 come from institutions where the radical right does not govern.
The 2026 Policy Architecture: The Pact, Returns, and Externalisation
On June 12, 2026, the Pact on Migration and Asylum, comprising nine regulations and one directive designed to reform the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), entered into force across the EU (Consilium, 2026a; Eurodiaconia, 2026). Its declared objectives are “orderly” arrivals, “uniform” procedures, and a “fair balance” of solidarity and responsibility. Backers cite the real benefits: applicants now have access to free legal advice, and adults can work after 6 months instead of 9 (Eurodiaconia, 2026; Human Rights Watch, 2026a). Critics have replied that the same instruments can be used by states to block access to asylum procedures in vague cases of “mass influx” or “instrumentalization” of migration by third countries, and that states can “accomplish” their solidarity obligations by paying for asylum rather than accepting people (HRW, 2026a: 19).
The Pact is supported by the Returns Regulation. EU negotiators reached a provisional agreement on a new regulation that imposes strong measures on those without a right to stay and allows member states to designate a return hub in a third country as a final destination for migrants or as a transit point (Consilium, 2026b). Deportees could be dispatched to hubs with which they have no connection, and the Netherlands is looking to coordinate the movement with Denmark, Germany, Greece, and Austria, although it is said that discussions with Uganda have stalled (France 24, 2026). Legal analysis highlights that, under the framework, there is greater scope for longer detention, including for children and families, and that there is greater use of an expanded “safe third country” concept, which was adopted in February 2026 (The Conversation, 2026a). The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2025) has set out prerequisites without which return hubs could not comply with EU fundamental rights law.
Legal analysis highlights that, under the framework, there is greater scope for longer detentions, including for children and families, and that there is greater use of an expanded “safe third country” concept, which was adopted in February 2026 (The Conversation, 2026a). The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights [FRA], 2025) has set out prerequisites without which return hubs could not comply with EU fundamental rights law.
The policy justifications are not only political but also administrative: EU institutions have observed that merely 20% of deportation orders are implemented every year (Euronews, 2025). Yet, the design is strikingly similar to a populist idea that migration is, at its core, an issue of deportation. The center has not been taken over by populists, but it has adopted populist means to address real implementation shortcomings.
Reception Conditions and the Politics of “Amenities”
The recast Reception Conditions Directive lays down minimum standards for applicants (Consilium, 2026a; European Commission, n.d.), such as the requirement to provide housing, food, and clothing. The political dimension of the gap between standards and practice is twofold. Shortages and withdrawals are recorded for migrants. The FRA (2026) notes that, in Finland, reception conditions were temporarily reduced for asylum seekers, with their basic needs being met; a High Court judgment in Ireland awarded damages to asylum seekers who were left homeless on their arrival; and an Italian case involved the withdrawal of reception conditions from an asylum seeker and a child who refused a transfer. In the Netherlands, capacity has been under pressure, and there are limited prospects of being reallocated to housing (European Union Agency for Asylum, 2026). There is a description of uneven implementation of the Pact itself, with the legislation largely in place but the capacity for operational implementation limited in some places (Eurodiaconia, 2026). Moreover, there is criticism from advocacy organizations of the approach of placing asylum seekers in large centers away from host communities, which reduces contact with the host population (Jesuit Refugee Service Europe, 2024).
Visible reception arrangements are symbols for host societies. In areas with limited housing, the presence of government-sponsored housing for newcomers may be perceived as a privilege, even when it is of low quality. As AP reported, Spanish protests this autumn were fueled by a housing shortage, driven in part by population growth and the rise of short-term rentals, with the eviction of an 87-year-old tenant becoming a focal point of mobilization (Barry & Associated Press, 2026). The point is not that migrants are to blame, but that scarcity sets the stage for the success of such populist narratives of competition. Reception policy is thus a communication problem rather than a welfare one, and the lack of enough housing for everyone is the common denominator.
The October 2026 Protests: Migration as a Frame, Not a Cause
Students march through the streets of Paris, France, during protests that ended in riots on October 6, 2026.
The “Oct. 17 Movement,” which has just been formed, has been the principal instigator of these demonstrations, along with student federations, grassroots unions, and anti-war coalitions, and the demands include pensions, housing, anti-war activism, education, and corruption (Barry & Associated Press, 2026). Protests against the cost of living and over education in France resulted in 1,314 arrests just on Saturday, October 24, 2026 (CBS News/AP, 2026); another protest, organized by around 50 organizations, including unions, left-wing parties, and student groups, and aimed at a far-right demonstration, was also reported (CBS News/AP, 2026). Police counted 11,000 participants, while organizers claimed 26,000. Mobilization against the radical right is thus part of the protest landscape as well.
Milan is an illustration of the interpretive contest. In addition to foreign nationals, police reported that about 2,000 “very young” protesters took part in the looting, many of whom were “naturalized, second-generation Italians” who had not felt a connection to Italy and lacked prospects, according to a center-left city official (Barry & Associated Press, 2026). In Rome, a right-wing student organization broke away from the violence, and peaceful student demonstrations emphasized that they were not “rioters.” There are several additional factors, such as pension and housing marches in Spain, tenant protests in Lisbon, and student protests in Tirana, as well as a snap election in Spain planned for next month (Barry & Associated Press, 2026).
There are two analytical points to follow. The first is that most of this wave would be misdescribed as an “anti-immigration protest”; treating it as such embodies what this review terms the migrantization of grievance. Second, the actors who benefit from the misdescription are those who profit from making social conflict into border politics. Whether the radical right will gain electoral traction remains an empirical question; early polls offer some indication but should be treated with caution until elections are held.
Europe in the Global South: A Structural and Postcolonial Perspective
Discussions of populism and migration in Europe often begin at the border, overlooking the broader political economy that shapes migration patterns. A structural, postcolonial reading expands this analytical framework without reducing migration to a single cause. Libya provides one of the most extensively studied cases. Scholars link the collapse of Libyan state institutions following the NATO-led intervention in 2011 to the expansion of smuggling routes through the country. They also argue that Europe’s subsequent policy of transferring responsibility for migration control to Libya has facilitated exploitation and abuse (Feldstein, 2018). Pradella and Taghdisi Rad (2017) examine the same sequence of events through theories of imperialism and the global reserve army of labor to analyze migration from Libya. This does not necessarily mean that the intervention itself directly caused displacement—a question that remains contested—but rather that European policy decisions form part of the causal chain, rather than standing outside it.
The Sahel extends the claim. European-funded programs assumed that people migrate from the Sahara to Europe, yet research in the region shows that these initiatives disrupted a centuries-old migration system between Niger and Chad, where people suspected of smuggling were arrested (CORDIS, n.d.). Critics argue that EU migration control in the Mediterranean and military stabilization in the Sahel recreate a colonial asymmetry and geography in which the two regions are kept apart, and that today’s border violence is “a late consequence” of the violent confrontation between Europe and the Global South, as Danewid (2017) puts it.
This trend continues with the current policy package in the form of externalization. In its January 2026 update, the Commission allocated EUR 675 million for the southern neighborhood migration measures for 2025–2027 (borderline-europe, 2026). The 2023 EU-Tunisia memorandum is a template for the arrangements with Egypt and Mauritania (EUobserver, n.d.), and the EU agreed on EUR 210 million with Mauritania in 2024 (European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 2024). Tunisia was added to the EU list of safe countries of origin in February 2026, and in July 2026, a group of 46 organizations called for the suspension of border and migration-control support for the security forces in Tunisia because of violent interceptions and expulsions (HRW, 2026b). But analysts say that these funds go to the security forces of authoritarian allies rather than to local economies, which could address the drivers of migration (Khan, 2024).
The connection to “populism” runs both ways. Both externalization and return hubs enable governments to project control to domestic audiences while removing the violence from sight. Meanwhile, the populist rhetoric of “invasion” relies on forgetting that the policies it demands and the people those policies affect are historically rooted in the same relationships that explain the movement of people. So, no actors are excused from postcolonial analysis; the border is not the start of a chain; it is the end.
Conclusion and Future Research Agenda
This review has suggested that Europe’s migration politics of 2026 can best be understood as an interplay between three processes: agenda-setting by the populist radical right, convergence of policy in the mainstream, and an ongoing “externalization” of migration with the Global South. Migration as the master explanation of the unrest fails to come to terms with the fact that the grievances concerning housing, pensions, education, and corruption are real, and that their migrantization is more to the benefit of political entrepreneurs than protesters.
Four research gaps are identified below.
First, comparative research is needed to examine the effects of restrictionist policies on support for the radical right, drawing on election results rather than polling data.
Second, empirical studies should test the migrantization-of-grievance hypothesis—for instance, by examining how media coverage and parliamentary attention frame demonstrations over housing and the cost of living.
Third, the operational pressures on fundamental rights guarantees should be assessed through systematic monitoring of the Pact’s implementation and the establishment of the first return hubs.
Fourth, postcolonial studies and populism studies need to be brought into dialogue, as each generally treats the other as background context. As with many political movements, however, populism’s power in Europe lies in the questions it forces the mainstream to confront, while the answers offered by populists reveal as much about Europe’s historical entanglements as they do about the continent’s contemporary borders.
(*) Shaza Khalid is affiliated with Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia (UIII), Depok, West Java, Indonesia (ORCID ID: 0009-0009-7331-0329). Maryam Hameed is a student at the same university (ORCID ID: 0009-0001-7424-0459).
Brubaker, R. (2017). “Between nationalism and civilizationism: The European populist moment in comparative perspective.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(8), 1191–1226. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2017.1294700
CORDIS. (n.d.). International mobility, local economics and European cooperation policies in the central Sahara (MOLECOPS, Project No. 652755). https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/652755
Danewid, I. (2017). “White innocence in the Black Mediterranean: Hospitality and the erasure of history.” Third World Quarterly, 38(7), 1674–1689. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1331123
Pradella, L., & Taghdisi Rad, S. (2017). “Libya and Europe: Imperialism, crisis and migration.” Third World Quarterly,38(11), 2411–2427. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1350819
Ridgwell, H. (2024, October 2). “Far-right gains in Europe drive debate on migration, Ukraine aid.” Voice of America. https://www.voanews.com/a/far-right-gains-in-europe-drive-debate-on-migration-ukraine-aid-/7808290.html
In this commentary, Dr. João Ferreira Dias examines the political significance of Flávio Bolsonaro’s departure for the United States and its implications for Bolsonarism’s increasingly transnational orientation. Drawing on the ideological affinities between Bolsonarism and Trump’s MAGA movement, Dr. Dias explores how narratives of political persecution, electoral illegitimacy, and national salvation can transform foreign intervention into an expression of supposed patriotism. Particular attention is devoted to evangelical conservatism, conspiratorial thinking, and the political instrumentalization of exile. Situating these dynamics within the Trump administration’s renewed assertion of American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, the commentary argues that Bolsonarism’s pursuit of external protection exposes a fundamental contradiction between nationalist rhetoric and political sovereignty, raising broader questions about populism, democratic legitimacy, and foreign influence in Brazil.
Flávio Bolsonaro’s departure for the United States can serve several political purposes. It allows a defeated candidate to be presented as a persecuted leader, gives Bolsonarism a platform from which to seek American intervention and connects the movement’s ambitions with Washington’s renewed claim to predominance in the Americas. These possibilities acquire particular significance among supporters who already look to Donald Trump to save Brazil from its own elected government.
The “SOS” appeals posted by Brazilian users in White House comment sections express that expectation of rescue. A foreign president is asked to act as the protector of a nation supposedly held captive by its domestic enemies. There is also a documented precedent beyond social media. During Brazil’s Independence Day demonstrations in September 2025, Bolsonaro supporters displayed American flags and called for US sanctions to continue, despite their potential costs to the Brazilian economy (CNN Brasil, 2025). For those participants, foreign coercion had become an acceptable means of pursuing domestic political objectives.
What, then, does patriotism mean when national salvation depends on the intervention of another country?
The answer requires examining how these supporters understand the nation. If the authentic Brazil is identified exclusively with Bolsonarism, a government elected by its opponents can be treated as an occupying power. Pressure against that government becomes compatible with love of country because the political community has already been reduced to those who belong to the movement. The rights and choices of everyone else lose their authority to define Brazil’s future.
This helps explain the attraction of a Brazilian political order modelled on MAGA. Trump offers these sectors a language of national restoration and a model of leadership organized around confrontation with institutions and internal enemies. Americanization, in this political sense, promises a Brazil in which their own values prevail with the backing of a powerful foreign protector. The resulting dependence can be understood by its supporters as the recovery of a country they believe has been taken from them.
The comparison with MAGA also concerns the capacity to sustain a political reality insulated from contradiction. Within this interpretative framework, electoral defeat is evidence of fraud, judicial proceedings confirm persecution, and leaving the country demonstrates that democracy has ceased to exist. Events that might lead supporters to question their convictions can instead reinforce them. Conspiratorial explanations provide ways of preserving the leader’s innocence and the movement’s claim to represent the nation, however far those explanations depart from verifiable reality.
The evangelical dimension matters within this process. Almeida’s (2019) analysis situates a significant and internally diverse evangelical constituency within Brazil’s conservative mobilization. Where political conflict acquires the language of spiritual warfare, compromise becomes harder to accommodate: opponents can be understood as agents of evil, while leadership assumes a providential significance. Under these conditions, the experience of defeat can strengthen the expectation that the leader has a mission yet to fulfil.
Exile can give that expectation a new political form. The absent leader remains available as the representative of a supposedly captive nation, protected abroad while awaiting the conditions for his return. Distance also allows supporters to imagine him beyond the compromises of ordinary opposition politics. Flávio does not automatically inherit his father’s charisma, but the narrative of persecution offers a means of constructing that inheritance. American protection can become part of the story through which he claims to continue a family mission interrupted at home.
This expectation meets a receptive geopolitical framework in the Donroe Doctrine. The 2025 US National Security Strategy reasserts American predominance in the Western Hemisphere through a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. It also commits Washington to encouraging regional governments, parties and movements aligned with its principles and strategy (The White House, 2025: 15–16). Ideological affinity therefore has an explicit place within the pursuit of American regional power.
Flávio’s presence abroad can help connect the demand for national rescue with that external agenda. A narrative of persecution supplies a justification for pressure on Brazilian institutions, while American support can reinforce the authority of the leader seeking protection. This convergence does not require assuming that every step has been coordinated or that intervention must take a military form. Sanctions and diplomatic pressure already offer instruments through which foreign power can be brought into a domestic struggle.
The danger is that the restoration promised to supporters comes to depend on political tutelage from Washington. For the bolsonaristas asking Trump to save their country, a MAGA-inspired Brazil under American protection can become more desirable than a sovereign Brazil governed by their opponents.
In this commentary, Dr. Prerna Chahar examines the domestic and geopolitical implications of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s historic comeback in Brazil’s October 25, 2026, presidential runoff. Overcoming a first-round deficit, Lula secured a fourth presidential mandate with 51.79 percent of the vote, defeating Flávio Bolsonaro amid persistent polarization and contested electoral legitimacy. Dr. Chahar argues that this outcome underscores both Brazil’s democratic resilience and the continuing challenges posed by political division and institutional distrust. Internationally, Lula’s victory reinforces Brazil’s pursuit of strategic autonomy, multilateralism, and a more representative global order. Particular attention is devoted to BRICS, the G20, South–South cooperation, and relations with the United States, China, and India, highlighting Brazil’s evolving position within an increasingly multipolar international system.
Dr. Prerna Chahar*
Brazil’s presidential election of October 25, 2026, has implications extending far beyond Latin America. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won an unprecedented fourth presidential mandate, defeating conservative challenger Flávio Bolsonaro with 51.79 percent of valid votes against 48.21 percent. The result has renewed debates about democratic legitimacy, US influence in the Western Hemisphere, Brazil’s strategic autonomy, and the future of BRICS, the G20 and South-South cooperation. It also demonstrates how domestic electoral choices can influence the foreign-policy orientation of an important emerging power.
Lula’s political career reflects Brazil’s democratic transformation. Born into poverty in northeastern Brazil, he worked as a metalworker before emerging as a trade union leader during labor mobilizations against military rule in the late 1970s. He subsequently helped establish the Workers’ Party (PT), which became associated with labor rights, social inclusion and economic redistribution.
After several unsuccessful presidential campaigns, Lula won the presidency in 2002 and was re-elected in 2006. His governments from 2003 to 2010 prioritized social welfare, poverty reduction and Brazil’s international engagement. His political career was later disrupted by corruption investigations and imprisonment. His convictions were subsequently annulled, restoring his eligibility to contest the presidency. He returned to office after defeating Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. His 2026 victory marks his fourth successful presidential election, following those of 2002, 2006 and 2022.
Timing, Scope and Significance of the Election
Brazil’s general elections took place on October 4, 2026, with a presidential runoff on October 25 because neither candidate secured an absolute majority in the first round. The elections covered the presidency, state governorships, the National Congress and state legislatures. The results therefore determine not only executive leadership but also the legislative balance that will shape the next government’s ability to implement its agenda.
In the first round, Flávio Bolsonaro received 47.03 percent of valid votes, ahead of Lula’s 45.16 percent. Lula subsequently reversed this deficit, becoming the first candidate in Brazil’s current two-round presidential system to finish second in the first round and win the presidency in the runoff. He received 64,256,232 votes against Bolsonaro’s 59,826,041.
Lula’s victory marks the first time in Brazil’s modern democratic history that a presidential candidate has overturned a first-round deficit to win the presidency. Since the adoption of the two-round presidential election system in 1989, every candidate who led the first round had gone on to win the runoff until Lula’s historic comeback in 2026.
Reactions from Bolsonaro and Trump
Following his defeat, Flávio Bolsonaro initially refused to concede and called for the election to be annulled. He challenged a two-hour extension of voting at some polling stations, authorized to address transport difficulties affecting voters. However, the extension itself did not establish electoral fraud. His position subsequently shifted towards pursuing a legal challenge over alleged abuse of incumbency. Meanwhile, Brazil’s electoral authorities confirmed Lula’s victory. The episode recalls the response of his father, Jair Bolsonaro, to his 2022 defeat. Jair Bolsonaro was subsequently convicted over an attempt to overturn the electoral order and sentenced to 27 years in prison.
The central democratic question is whether electoral disputes are resolved through evidence, judicial review and constitutional procedures rather than unsupported allegations that undermine public confidence. Lula’s victory demonstrates the functioning of electoral competition, but Brazil’s democratic resilience will depend on institutional independence, transparency and the treatment of political opposition.
US President Donald Trump added an international dimension to the controversy by describing Brazil’s election on October 26 as appearing to be “another rigged election,” without providing evidence of irregularities. His comments reflected the ideological proximity between the Trump administration and the Bolsonaro political movement.
Lula’s victory preserves a government committed to an independent Brazilian foreign policy. His assertion that Brazil would not be anyone’s backyard captures its ambition to maintain strategic autonomy while engaging with the United States, China and other major powers.
BRICS, the G20 and South-South Cooperation
Lula’s fourth victory provides continuity for Brazil’s role in BRICS, where it has advocated greater representation for developing economies in global governance, stronger development financing and reform of international financial institutions. Brazil’s engagement with China will remain important for trade, infrastructure, agriculture and energy, without necessarily requiring alignment against Washington.
The G20 offers a broader platform for cooperation between advanced and emerging economies on climate finance, food security, debt sustainability and development. While BRICS can deepen coordination among emerging powers, the G20 can facilitate negotiations across different political and economic groupings. Neither forum, however, guarantees reform; progress depends on members translating shared commitments into practical outcomes.
For India, Brazil is an important partner in both institutions. Stronger India–Brazil cooperation could advance agricultural research, biofuels, renewable energy, digital technologies and climate action. More broadly, Lula’s mandate offers an opportunity to strengthen South–South cooperation through reciprocal trade, technology sharing, development finance and institutional capacity-building. Such cooperation must deliver measurable benefits rather than remain a declaration of political solidarity.
Lula’s fourth presidential victory represents a consequential moment for Brazilian democracy and its international orientation. It preserves Brazil’s commitment to strategic autonomy, multilateral engagement and cooperation through BRICS and the G20, while exposing the challenges of governing a divided electorate.
Ultimately, Brazil’s global influence will depend on economic performance, coalition-building and its ability to translate diplomatic ambitions into practical partnerships. The broader lesson for the emerging global order is that multipolarity depends not simply on resistance to established powers, but on democratic choice, national policy autonomy and effective international cooperation.
(*) Dr. Prerna Chahar is a scholar of International Relations whose research focuses on US foreign policy, inter-American relations, regional cooperation, and India’s foreign policy. She holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Centre for the Study of the Americas (CSA), School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
In this commentary, Niccolò Capozzi examines Matteo Salvini’s political repositioning following Lega’s extraordinary congress in Milan on October 24–25, 2026. Drawing on the party’s responses to the financial, migration, and COVID-19 crises, Capozzi argues that Lega has repeatedly adapted its leadership style, political enemies, and definition of “the people” while preserving its fundamental populist antagonism between ordinary citizens and corrupt elites. Salvini’s reelection, the removal of his name from the party logo, and renewed emphasis on federalism reflect efforts to address internal divisions and declining electoral support. As Lega approaches Italy’s 2027 general election, its criticism of military assistance to Ukraine signals another potential strategic shift. Yet, Capozzi concludes, the party’s underlying populist grammar remains remarkably unchanged.
By Niccolò Capozzi*
On October 24–25, 2026, Italy’s far-right party, known as Lega, held an extraordinary congress in Milan. Its leader, Matteo Salvini, had called it after some northern party members had called for a more federal party that was more attentive to the North. Does this move signal a change of identity or a change of tactics? To find out, we need to look at how Lega has acted and communicated during past crises, where a clear pattern emerges.
During the 2008 financial crisis, the 2015 migration crisis, and the 2020–2023 COVID-19 pandemic, Lega changed its enemies, its leadership style, and the way it exploited each emergency to its own advantage; however, the core of its message remained the same. During the financial crisis, Umberto Bossi was the leader of Lega Nord (Northern League), a regionalist movement that differed from its current form and represented ‘Padania,’ the North of Italy. It pitted the ‘people’ – the productive North – against the elite in Rome (meaning the central state, not Silvio Berlusconi’s government, of which Lega Nord was itself a member) and a South described as parasitic and non-contributing. The EU and the euro remained in the background. This contrast between a ‘pure’ people and a corrupt elite is what the political scientist Cas Mudde identifies as the defining feature of populism.
Every year, Bossi held an annual party rally in Pontida, a small town near Bergamo. He spoke to his supporters about contemporary issues. His bond with them was so strong that he used dialectal words typical of the North and opened rallies with ‘Va Pensiero,’ the chorus from Verdi’s Nabucco that the party had adopted as its anthem instead of Italy’s national anthem. At the party congress in 2012, for example, he complained about having to ‘work six months a year to pay taxes and sustain the waste of the south’ – a sign of the resentment and aversion the party felt towards the other part of Italy. However, the party was soon to change.
In December 2013, Matteo Salvini became the leader and began turning the party into a national force; the word ‘Nord’ would later disappear from its symbol. In 2015, as the migration crisis unfolded, Salvini enjoyed complete tactical freedom because Lega was in opposition to the center-left government of Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD). During this period, the ‘people’ were identified as workers, the unemployed, and people with disabilities, whilst the enemies were irregular migrants, the NGOs helping them, and the Renzi government. In this instance, the crisis was portrayed as a sort of invasion by illegal immigrants, to the extent that a rally called ‘Stop Invasione’ (Stop the Invasion) was organized in October 2014 in Milan. Salvini called himself ‘Capitano’ and used short slogans designed for television – and thus to attract viewers. Subsequently, he brought the same message to the European Parliament, where he accused the EU of caring about immigrants while it ‘couldn’t care less about the unemployed.’
When the pandemic hit in 2020, Lega was back in opposition, having left Giuseppe Conte’s first government in 2019. Its communication strategy varied considerably; in March 2020, Salvini said that ‘we must shut everything down’; a few months later, he feared that hunger would kill more people than the virus; in 2021, he rejected the Green Pass – Italy’s COVID-19 certificate – saying that the people should not be subject to any kind of obligation. The enemies were Conte’s second government, its scientific advisory committee, virologists and, finally, Brussels, which was failing to act. His style also changed: he no longer addressed the public loudly from a stage but adopted a calmer, more institutional tone – partly because he spoke in the Senate and tabled bills. One detail worth noting: from February 2021, Lega was part of the Draghi government – the same government that introduced the Green Pass – yet it continued to oppose the measures. This is important for understanding how tactics adapt: the party changes its position but continues to present itself as the voice of the people who decide.
In all three crises, two elements have never changed: the opposition between a ‘pure’ people and a corrupt elite, and the moralization of politics. At the same time, the definition of ‘the people,’ the identity of the enemy, and the leader’s rhetoric were constantly shifting. Thus, the tactics changed while the underlying structure remained the same. It is through this lens that this year’s Milan congress should be analyzed.
Salvini had formally resigned in order to stand again and as expected, he was re-elected by secret ballot held on October 25, 2026, with 465 votes to 146 for his challenger, Massimo Garavaglia, a Lega senator and former tourism minister. The first move the ‘new’ leader made was to remove his own name from Lega’s logo and insert ‘Italia Federale,’ a formula first used by Bossi in 1994. Apparently, he made this change because the new electoral law requires coalitions to name their candidate for Prime Minister, and that is currently Giorgia Meloni. However, Salvini’s actions in recent times have sparked tensions within Lega; therefore, his decision is aimed more at reuniting the party around him. Removing the leader’s name is also a change in leadership style – one of the tactical dimensions described above – and shows how tactics depend on a populist party’s institutional position.
During the congress, Salvini also said he regretted joining Mario Draghi’s technocratic government during the pandemic. This is revealing, given that, while in that government, he had spoken as if he were in opposition in order to protect his popularity. The party now disowns the very tactic it used in 2021 – further evidence that tactics can change or be abandoned, even though the core of the message remains intact: Lega as the voice of the people against those in power.
What does the congress mean for the 2027 general election campaign? Lega currently stands at around 5 percent in the polls, compared with 8.8 percent in the 2022 general election. The problem is not limited to the North. Even Lega’s Senate group leader, Massimiliano Romeo, has admitted that people are no longer voting for Lega. Moreover, the northern leaders who had been calling for a change in leadership did not present a united front in the vote, and figures such as Luca Zaia, who governed Veneto for 15 years, ended up backing Salvini’s line. It is foreseeable that Lega will seek a new enemy to rally support for future national elections, and the congress offered a first candidate: aid to Ukraine. Salvini has said that Italy ‘cannot keep sending money’ and weapons to Kyiv. The pattern is the same as in 2015, when the party claimed that money was being spent on migrants rather than on Italians; today, the funds in question are those allocated to Ukraine. The enemy changes, but the pattern remains.
Lega’s congress serves as an example of how populist parties react when the crisis does not stem from external factors – the euro, migrants, or the virus – but from within the party itself. Even if the party tries to change elements such as its symbol, the role of its leaders, the constituency it addresses, and its enemies, the core of its message never changes: the honest people versus a distant elite that betrays them. It has learnt to change everything except its own grammar.
(*) Niccolò Capozzi graduated with a degree in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Florence and obtained a master’s degree in European Studies from Maastricht University, with a thesis on populist communication during crises. He is currently studying for the Joint Master’s in Global Economic Governance and Public Affairs at the LUISS School of Government and CIFE, based in Rome, Berlin, and Nice, and has interests in European politics, populism, political communication, and geopolitics.
In this commentary, Professor Ibrahim Ozturk examines Turkey’s 2026 investment-fund crisis as a manifestation of the political economy of populist authoritarian rule under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He argues that the scandal reflects not merely financial misconduct but the cumulative consequences of personalized power, weakened regulatory independence, and politically mediated economic privileges. Drawing on institutional indicators, monetary-policy developments, and the networks connecting political elites, financial regulators, and market actors, Professor Ozturk demonstrates how populist appeals to sovereignty legitimize selective economic protection while ordinary investors bear disproportionate losses. He contends that lasting recovery requires more than financial stabilization or individual prosecutions: it demands institutional reconstruction, independent oversight, transparency, and effective constitutional constraints on presidential authority.
Turkey’s 2026 investment-fund crisis is a structurally generated, unavoidable outcome of the autocratic regime Erdogan has constructed. The presidential system introduced in 2018 consolidated personalized authority, weakened institutional checks, and subordinated professional judgment to political dependence. Discretionary monetary policy and compromised financial oversight share an allocation logic: access and protection are selective, while losses fall on households and public balance sheets. Populist claims of sovereignty legitimize this arrangement; restrictions on journalism, opposition, and independent scrutiny obstruct its correction. The crisis therefore belongs to a cumulative history of weakened accountability and opportunities for rent extraction. Lasting recovery requires changing the institutions that reproduce these outcomes, which is unlikely under Erdogan’s preferred architecture for regime overhaul.
Populism, Selective State Capacity, and Regime Reproduction
Turkey’s September 2026 fund crisis should be understood as a manifestation of Erdogan’s political-economic order. Its significance extends beyond market participants’ misconduct to the deliberate weakening of institutions that can constrain them. Building on my earlier ECPS work, this commentary argues that recurrent financial crises are endogenous to a regime that concentrates appointment powers, distributes protection selectively and restricts independent challenge. The exact timing of a collapse is contingent; the repeated production of risk and unequal loss is a foreseeable consequence of these institutional choices.
Mudde’s account defines populism through a moral opposition between a virtuous people and a corrupt elite. In office, those who claim to embody the popular will can delegitimize courts, regulators, and professional dissent as obstacles to the national mandate. Under Erdogan, this justificatory language accompanies a governing structure in which loyalty increasingly substitutes for independent judgment. Populism supplies the legitimacy claim; authoritarian institutional reorganization supplies the means of overriding constraints.
Dornbusch and Edwards identify a macroeconomic cycle in which expansionary promises discount inflation and external financing constraints, eventually imposing adjustment costs on intended beneficiaries. Turkey adds a distributional dimension: politically mediated credit, asset ownership and access to protection favour already advantaged groups. Rodrik’s distinction between political and economic populism helps separate legitimate challenges to entrenched privilege from the removal of safeguards against executive predation.
The causal mechanism operates through appointments, incentives and information. Political dependence weakens oversight; privileged access enables selective gains; public intervention can displace losses onto less-protected groups. Restricting scrutiny then lowers the likelihood of correction and permits repetition. Cross-country evidence links populist leadership to institutional erosion and lower long-run income; the Turkish case identifies the channels through which that broader association becomes a governing practice.
This situation reflects a selective state capacity rather than a uniformly weak state: substantial power to mobilize credit, reorganize institutions, and discipline critics coexists with weakened independent capacity to restrain connected interests. My 2022 ECPS analysis traced Turkey’s economic deterioration to the reversal of reforms and the subordination of expertise. The fund scandal extends that diagnosis from macroeconomic management to financial-market governance.
For instance, the broader institutional trajectory, central to the current crisis conundrum, predates the ongoing monetary experiments and the financial sector more broadly. Between 2014 and 2025, V-Dem’s central estimates fell from 0.538 to 0.402 for human rights, from 0.252 to 0.110 for liberal democracy, and from 0.386 to 0.157 for the rule of law. The sharpest declines occurred in 2016–2017; when the highly controversial coup attempt took place, later improvements did not restore earlier levels. Table 1 juxtaposes this deterioration with currency depreciation, accumulated inflation and increased income concentration. The indices describe institutional conditions rather than individual culpability.
From Institutional Reform to the Erosion of Accountability
The 2000–2001 crisis provides an institutional baseline for comparison. Fiscal fragility, public-bank losses and weak banking discipline exposed vulnerabilities that political confrontation triggered. Banking restructuring, stronger supervision and a floating exchange rate subsequently supported recovery under an IMF, World Bank and EU membership-reform framework. The AKP, the current government party, initially benefited from this inherited trajectory. Its later dismantling matters precisely because institutional credibility and international engagement had demonstrated their economic value.
The December 2013 deep successive corruption scandals and investigations, which brought allegations of extensive bribery, illicit gold trading and abuse of public office involving high-profile ministers in Erdogan’s inner circle into public view, also raised broader questions about ruling-party parliamentarians and businessmen allegedly awarded tailor-made public contracts in exchange for financial and political favors sought by Erdogan himself. The subsequent response marked a critical rupture in accountability: despite the gravity of the allegations, Parliament declined to refer four former ministers for trial, closing the route to judicial examination that referral would have opened. The US conviction of Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who served as deputy general manager of the state-owned Halkbank, and the guilty plea of Reza Zarrab, who was a gold trader central to the December 2013 allegations, subsequently established sanctions-evasion offenses in a separate jurisdiction. Although legally distinct, these cases illuminate a connected political-economic mechanism: shielding politically connected actors from independent scrutiny weakens deterrence and entrenches expectations of protection. Impunity becomes cumulative when accountability failures incentivize subsequent abuses.
The 2018 confrontation with Donald Trump’s administration exposed the limits of performed sovereignty to be used as a decisive element in domestic populist politics. In August 2018, US sanctions over the detention of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor held in Turkey on terrorism-related charges that Washington rejected as unfounded, escalated the diplomatic confrontation. Trump’s subsequent 50 percent tariff on Turkish steel, which doubled the existing 25 percent duty and sharply increased the barriers facing Turkish exporters in the US market, added trade pressure to the dispute. These measures aggravated an economy already vulnerable to dependence on external financing and currency mismatches, as the IMF’s assessment documented. The confrontation thus exposed the material limits of sovereignty rhetoric in an economy dependent on international capital and export markets. As a result, depreciation increased import costs and foreign-currency debt burdens.
The CBRT responded by raising its policy rate from 17.75 to 24 percent. The problem was the durability of stabilization when presidential authority could subsequently displace its institutional basis. Reserve depletion followed a separate policy choice. Reuters reported approximately US$128 billion in dollar sales by state banks over the preceding two years in May 2021; the IMF identified inadequate buffers and negative net reserves after swaps. Obviously, dollar sales against lira do not prove the entire sum was stolen, but they highlight limited public capacity and insufficient transparency about transactions and beneficiaries. Defending a politically preferred exchange-rate path consumed resources while postponing acknowledgment of underlying constraints.
Discretionary Easing, Selective protection, and Costly Stabilization
Political intervention weakened institutional capacity by subordinating professional judgment to presidential preferences. Figure 1 connects successive monetary-policy reversals to the executive’s appointment and removal powers. Following Murat Cetinkaya’s dismissal in July 2019, the policy rate fell from 24 to 8.25 percent under Murat Uysal. Naci Agbal later reversed course, raising it to 19 percent in March 2021, but was dismissed two days after his final increase. His removal showed how vulnerable professional tenure is when monetary decisions conflict with presidential preferences.
Under Sahap Kavcioglu, politically imposed easing reduced the policy rate from 19 percent in September 2021 to 8.5 percent by February 2023. At the November 2022 decision, the rate stood 76.51 percentage points below the latest published annual inflation rate. This nominal gap, rather than a realized return, captures the divergence between monetary policy and prevailing inflation. Cheap lira financing encouraged foreign-currency and asset purchases, contributing to depreciation while offering asset-owning borrowers protections unavailable to wage earners and unhedged savers.
Erdogan legitimized easing by shifting appeals from rhetoric about “sovereignty” and “external enemies” to religious authority. Invoking nas—a binding Islamic injunction—against usury (riba), he framed lower interest rates not only as a religious obligation, but also asserted that interest causes inflation, not vice versa. This shift between nationalist and religious justifications illustrates populism’s adaptability: both appeals shield discretionary authority from scrutiny while society absorbs the costs.
After the 2023 elections, tightening under Hafize Gaye Erkan and Fatih Karahan raised the rate to 50 percent by March 2024; by year-end, it exceeded annual CPI inflation. Figure 2 shows the successive burdens of inflationary erosion and costly stabilization. Inflation initially accelerated despite tightening as depreciation, tax and administered-price increases, wage adjustments and expectations interacted with delayed monetary transmission. This coexistence does not establish that higher rates caused the preceding crisis. More fundamentally, technocratic correction restored a conventional instrument without constraining the executive powers that had enabled its subordination.
Exchange-rate-protected deposits (known as Kur Korumalı Mevduat-KKM) introduced in December 2021 shifted some depreciation risk onto the Treasury and Central Bank balance sheets. Participating savers received publicly underwritten protection unavailable to households without qualifying deposits. Successive policy shifts thus created different opportunities for protection through cheap credit, asset appreciation, KKM guarantees and later high nominal deposit returns. Credit-constrained households and firms instead faced purchasing-power losses, expensive working capital and weaker demand. Establishing that the same connected actors benefited throughout requires linked transaction records; the structural mechanism is the repeated redistribution of gains and losses through discretionary policy.
Distributional indicators reveal unequal capacities to absorb these shocks. The World Bank income Gini rose from 41.2 in 2014 to 43.7 in 2023, while UBS reports a separate wealth Gini of 0.73 for 2025, placing Turkey tenth among covered markets. The OECD Employment Outlook 2026 reports approximately 79 percent growth in CPI-deflated business-sector hourly wages between early 2021 and early 2026, alongside a falling minimum-to-median wage ratio and declining real minimum wages by April 2026. Average wage recovery therefore coexisted with uneven gains; it neither measures median household income nor resolves concerns about the official inflation deflator.
TURK-IS’s November 2025 estimates make this insecurity concrete: the net minimum wage covered only 74.1 percent of a four-person household’s food budget and 57 percent of a single worker’s estimated living costs. These adequacy benchmarks, rather than official poverty rates, demonstrate low-paid workers’ exposure to essential expenses. Limited public provision compounds that exposure. Turkey ranks near the bottom of the OECD’s social-spending comparison, while health expenditure amounted to 4.7 percent of GDP against an OECD average of 9.3 percent. These overlapping measures highlight the opportunity costs of financial guarantees when public services remain comparatively underfunded.
Although the IMF acknowledged that post-2023 tightening reduced crisis risks, changing the monetary instrument leaves politically mediated allocation intact. Recovery must therefore be assessed through investment, distribution and public capacity alongside disinflation.
Persistent price increases also undermine planning. Compounding official inflation rates shows that prices increased approximately 432 percent between end-2020 and end-2024; subsequent disinflation did not reverse that accumulation. Over the longer period, annual-average inflation rose from 8.85 percent in 2014 to 34.88 percent in 2025, while the exchange rate moved from TRY2.19 to TRY39.45 per dollar. The annual-average CPI implies that a fixed nominal lira amount retained only approximately 7.6 percent of its 2014 purchasing power.
Supply and demand continue to operate, but unstable money obscures relative prices and sustainable margins. Firms may postpone productive investment while households seek exceptional nominal returns to recover earlier losses. The resulting demand for financial protection becomes an opportunity for extraction where independent oversight, reliable information, and enforceable investor rights are weak.
The Fund Fraud: Distorted Price Discovery, the Demand for Financial Protection
The fund crisis follows from the interaction of these conditions. Monetary instability creates demand for protection; concentrated portfolios amplify valuation risk; politically dependent oversight weakens correction. The scandal is therefore part of the regime’s cumulative political economy, not an isolated accident outside it. Institutional responsibility rests on the deliberate construction and maintenance of this incentive structure; individual criminal responsibility still depends on evidence of particular acts.
The crisis emerged after explicit warnings, not in the absence of information. On 4 November 2025, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek publicly acknowledged manipulation through certain investment funds and promised stronger regulation. MSCI’s June 2026 review subsequently flagged possible coordinated trading and artificially inflated free-float estimates. S&P Dow Jones Indices warned in July about transparency and market-classification risks, while FTSE Russell also raised concerns over transparency and market accessibility. This accumulation of domestic acknowledgment and external warnings shifts the accountability question from whether authorities knew to why their response failed to contain the risks. Early evidence points to political protection or interference obstructing effective intervention, requiring an independent examination of supervisory correspondence and decision records.
After mounting external pressure that, unless decisive corrective measures are taken, Turkey could be isolated from emerging market status, the Capital Markets Board (SPK) placed in September 131 funds associated with seven portfolio-management companies into liquidation, with 455,758 unique investors subsequently identified. Reuters reported affected assets exceeding US$18 billion and a weekly equity-index decline of more than 8 percent. These figures show the scale of exposure and disruption, not the amount stolen or final investor losses.
Other indicators show how stress spread beyond the affected funds. A press compilation of Central Securities Depository data recorded a fall in listed-equity capitalization from TRY22.91 trillion at end-August to TRY19.08 trillion in late September, approximately 16.7 percent. Reporting based on TEFAS data identified net fund outflows exceeding TRY210 billion after August 28. Meanwhile, net purchases through Ziraat Yatirim reportedly reached TRY22.3 billion on September 21, while gross central-bank reserves fell by US$13.8 billion between August 28 and September 18. Valuation changes, withdrawals, brokerage transactions and reserve movements measure different phenomena. They cannot be added into a single damage estimate or attributed entirely to the crisis. Purchases through a publicly owned intermediary also do not establish public expenditure without identifying the underlying accounts.
Valuation Feedback, Liquidity Risk, and Delayed Intervention
In the emerging Ponzi-like scheme, the financial mechanism combines valuation feedback with liquidity risk. Concentrated purchases of thinly traded low-free-float shares can raise quoted prices and reported fund values. Strong apparent performance attracts subscriptions that finance further purchases; higher collateral valuations may also support additional borrowing. Where related parties control funds and portfolio companies, investors’ interests may conflict with the wider group’s financing objectives.
This cycle can widen the gap between quoted prices and realizable portfolio value. Redemption pressure exposes the discrepancy, while sales of liquid holdings transmit stress to other securities. The Financial Stability Board recognizes liquidity mismatch as a general vulnerability of open-ended funds. Turkey’s distinctive problem is whether its institutions could identify and constrain the accumulation of these risks independently of commercial and political pressures.
However, the principal–agent problem in Turkey extends beyond fund management, underlining a broader systemic characteristic. Investors entrust managers with assets; citizens entrust regulators with protection. When the political executive controls supervisory appointments, agents may be incentivized to satisfy influential networks rather than their public mandate. Preferential access and weak sanctions then lower the expected cost of risk-taking and extraction. The formal existence of a regulator is insufficient when its effective independence has been subordinated.
The SPK’s September 18 statement acknowledged abnormal fund-driven movements in low-free-float shares during the final quarter of 2025. The Financial Stability Committee considered the issue on December 2; a working group followed on December 3; the qualified-investor threshold increased on December 18. Comprehensive guide changes came on August 28, 2026. The interval makes supervisory responsibility unavoidable: administrative activity cannot establish that known exposures were adequately constrained or that continuing investors were protected.
The Principal–Agent Problem: Information Asymmetry, Conflicts of Interest and Institutional Protection
The fund crisis exposes a chain of delegated authority: investors entrust assets to managers, citizens entrust protection to regulators, and the executive appoints supervisors. Managers know more than investors; officials control records unavailable to citizens. Under Erdogan’s personalized appointment system, these information asymmetries intersect with political dependence. As a result, the resulting vulnerability is endogenous to the governing architecture: institutions expected to constrain accumulation can instead protect its beneficiaries.
Figure 3 connects ownership, management and inspection within a shared appointment network. Erdogan’s Turkey Wealth Fund chairmanship, Erisah Arican’s overlapping leadership, Mahmut Kayacik’s TVF–Takasbank responsibilities and Yunus Arinci’s move from the State Supervisory Council to Takasbank weaken institutional separation. Salih Tanrikulu’s former Borsa Istanbul role adds retrospective self-review risk. The principal–agent problem becomes acute when citizens’ monitors answer to the political network whose decisions require investigation.
Figure 4 examines delegated stewardship through Kilimci’s Tera roles, Çakmak’s management of insurance and pension assets, and Şener’s separate Interbank Card Center procurement (BKM) proceedings. The latest developments sharpen Çakmak’s conflict-of-interest dimension: after resigning on 15 October, he was remanded in custody on 24 October. Reported allegations include receiving US$1 million in cash for directing institutional resources into Tera funds; further reporting describes personal share transactions tied to institutional placements. His reported repayment of investment-related proceeds neither establishes the amount misappropriated nor resolves responsibility.
Iskender Balci, son of former banking regulator Mustafa Balci and son-in-law of Deputy Finance Minister Osman Celik, held company oversight roles at Ozata Denizcilik and DOF Robotik before his detention. Celik submitted his retirement request on October 19. Administrative departure leaves the central question unresolved: whether licensing, appointments and supervision were insulated from family interests through disclosure and recusal.
The Sayan family illustrates institutional mobility across politics, regulation and diplomacy. Ramazan Sayan, described in contemporary reporting as Erdogan’s longstanding associate, is the father of four siblings. Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya progressed through advisory work, Parliament, cabinet and party leadership. Omer Fatih Sayan moved through Prime Ministry advisory posts, BTK leadership, a deputy ministership and Turk Telekom board leadership before joining EPDK. Ayse Hilal Sayan Koytak advanced through ministerial and diplomatic appointments, including ambassadorships in Kuwait, Bahrain and Finland; Nazmiye Sumeyye Sayan served on Istanbul’s metropolitan council. Together, these trajectories warrant scrutiny of merit, access and appointment criteria.
The financial question is more specific. Reuters reported allegations concerning approximately TRY2.17 billion in combined share-sale proceeds received by Sayan Kaya and her husband before the turmoil. Whether Takasbank-supported liquidity facilitated their exits requires transaction-level evidence. Sale proceeds cannot be treated as profits, and institutional liquidity support alone does not establish preferential treatment.
Mustafa Yazici, son of senior AKP official and former minister Hayati Yazici, introduces distressed-debt collection into this network. The imposition and subsequent lifting of asset restrictions require transparent explanation. His company, Adil Varlik Yönetim, purchases non-performing receivables. Corporate records document a TRY450 million conversion of shareholder receivables into capital, but not their ultimate funding source. A TRY500 million financing bill arranged by Tera Yatirim subsequently generated an MKK non-payment notice. The intersection of connected financing and debt collection merits investigation; borrower complaints alone do not establish unlawful interest charges.
BTK belongs within the accountability analysis because restrictions on online reporting deepen information asymmetry. Reported blocking concerning Batuhan Mumcu and his wife requires examination of judicial orders, requests and implementation. Mumcu joined BTK’s board in August 2026; his wife, Neslihan Mumcu, appears in corporate disclosures concerning Bulls Yatırım Holding. Some reported restrictions predated his appointment; attributing them to his personal intervention would require additional evidence.
Figure 6 places SPK at the center. Ibrahim Omer Gonul, son of former Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul, moved from SPK chairmanship to KGK before being removed on October 20 alongside SPK chair Mahmut Sutcu. Sutcu had submitted his resignation the previous day. Tezmen’s former MKK role and Murat Onuk’s overlapping portfolio-management and Takasbank responsibilities further complicate independent oversight. Personnel changes leave earlier decisions and the executive’s appointment powers requiring scrutiny.
Reports that two SPK officials opposed Tera Yatirim’s flotation, were subsequently replaced, and that the reconstituted board approved the IPO two months later reveal how presidential appointment power can override institutional resistance. In Erdogan’s centralized system, replacing officials changes more than personnel: it reshapes the boundaries of permissible professional judgment. The sequence illustrates a principal–agent inversion in which regulators become accountable upwards to the appointing authority rather than outwards to investors and the public. Repeated failures to investigate politically protected conduct reinforce expectations of impunity, weaken deterrence, and make compliance with political preferences less costly than resistance. Subsequent dismissals cannot resolve this institutional responsibility: accountability must reach the authority that selected supervisors, enabled contested approvals and sustained the system of protection.
An inquiry must follow beneficial ownership and funding at entry; concentration, related-party transactions and valuation during investment; and information, financing and redemption terms at exit. Early withdrawal alone proves no insider dealing, but withdrawals above realizable asset values can shift shortfalls to remaining investors. Appointment records, supervisory correspondence, access logs and transaction trails are therefore indispensable.
In terms of an ex-post solution, the October 1 SPK announcement provided interim payments of up to TRY1 million per investor per fund for funds founded by four managers. Another announcement addressed liquidation and possible reopening for the other three, while voluntary-return accounts were established for excessive gains. Relief can reduce immediate hardship; it does not demonstrate that the institutional causes have been corrected or establish final recoveries and immunity from prosecution.
On October 6, the SPK disputed the claim of 130 ignored warnings and cited 96 criminal referrals concerning fund transactions in 2026. On October 4, it rejected claims that protection of the Investor Compensation Center’s assets originated in July 2026, citing earlier provisions. Independent review must test these defenses against dated records: aggregate enforcement activity cannot answer whether particular warnings were handled adequately.
The political feedback mechanism is crucial here: economic deterioration threatens consent; legal and administrative pressure limits the conversion of grievance into organized opposition; weaker scrutiny protects the allocation system that generated the damage. Widespread arrests and dismissals, and media censorship, show that intervention under pressure narrows scrutiny precisely when it is most necessary. An inquiry controlled by the same appointment network cannot resolve this problem without independent experts, parliamentary authority and enforceable access to records.
Conclusion
Turkey’s fund crisis is an endogenous outcome of the governing order Erdogan has constructed. Discretionary economic policy creates vulnerabilities; politically dependent institutions suppress corrective scrutiny; privileged access enables selective enrichment while losses reach ordinary investors and public balance sheets. Repeated scandals reflect the cumulative consequences of institutional choices that subordinate professional judgement to presidential authority and weaken deterrence through expectations of protection. Populist appeals to sovereignty, national distinctiveness and religious obligation legitimize this discretion, while restrictions on journalism and opposition obstruct scrutiny of its consequences.
Financial repair must therefore accompany a redistribution of institutional authority. Immediate priorities include independently verified valuations, disclosure of related-party exposures, preservation of supervisory and transaction records, and recovery from those responsible. Any public support must identify its beneficiaries, legal basis and recovery strategy. Protecting vulnerable investors requires preventing further transfers of private losses to society.
Durable recovery, however, requires constraints on the executive itself. Independent courts, effective parliamentary oversight, merit-based appointments and protection for professional disagreement must replace supervision organized around political loyalty. Regulators, auditors and market infrastructure need genuinely independent cross-checks, supported by investigative journalism, academic freedom and competitive opposition. Accountability must follow appointment and decision chains wherever they lead, including into the presidency.
The fund crisis ultimately exposes how Erdogan’s governing order converts public authority into selective private advantage while shielding its beneficiaries from independent scrutiny. Gains sustain politically connected networks; losses fall on investors, wider society and future generations. Breaking this pattern requires restoring the rule of law and subjecting presidential authority to effective institutional checks. Otherwise, replacing officials and prosecuting selected actors leaves intact the structure that enables extraction, protects privilege and reproduces impunity.
Erdogan’s responses to successive crises suggest that meaningful reform from within this governing order is increasingly implausible. The recurrent protection of connected interests supports a political-economic interpretation of corruption as a means of financing and consolidating his regime-building project. As implicated networks expand, independent accountability threatens both their accumulated advantages and the political authority that sustains them, deepening resistance to reform. Expecting Erdogan to dismantle these arrangements therefore overlooks their role in his political survival. Institutional reconstruction requires a democratic reconfiguration of power that can investigate the presidency itself.
India’s Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has transformed a satirical identity into a vehicle for political mobilization outside conventional party structures. Its emergence raises a question about contemporary protest populism: can a movement construct a political people without a dominant leader, and who exercises authority in their name? In this ECPS Voices of Youth (VoY) commentary, Saurabh Raj examines how the movement connects diverse grievances through a shared anti-establishment identity while confronting dilemmas of leadership, representation, and democratic accountability. Drawing on theories of populism and counter-democracy, Raj argues that successful mobilization does not automatically confer representative legitimacy. The movement’s democratic test ultimately concerns whether participants can hold those acting on their behalf accountable.
In July 2026, a youth-led movement called the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) celebrated the resignation of India’s Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, following weeks of protests over examination irregularities. Three months later, its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, was detained ahead of another demonstration. Anticipating his detention, he had recorded a video designating a colleague to lead the protest in his absence (The Hitavada, 2026; India Today, 2026). The contrast is revealing. A movement that emerged through political satire had acquired the capacity to challenge powerful institutions without becoming an electoral party. Yet its collective identity could not independently determine who should negotiate, decide or lead.
CJP is part of a wider movement of youth-led anti-establishment mobilization. From Kenya and Bangladesh to Nepal, specific grievances over taxation, employment and corruption have developed into broader challenges to political authority. Their outcomes differ, but they raise a common question about the relationship between popular mobilization and institutional representation. I argue that CJP’s innovation lies in constructing a popular political identity without a conventional party or dominant charismatic leader, while its democratic challenge lies in making the authority exercised in that identity accountable to those it claims to represent.
Understanding Protest Populism
Populism is often associated with charismatic leaders claiming to embody the will of ordinary citizens against established elites. Yet this represents only one understanding of the phenomenon. Laclau (2005) conceptualizes populism as a political logic through which separate social demands become connected in opposition to an established order. Through this process, the people emerge as a political identity rather than a pre-existing, homogeneous constituency. A symbol, slogan or demand can function as an empty signifier, bringing different grievances together without eliminating their differences. Gerbaudo’s (2023) analysis of the populist turn in social movements extends this understanding. Movements such as Occupy Wall Street and France’s Yellow Vests constructed broad popular identities capable of mobilizing citizens across established ideological boundaries.
Here, protest populism refers to this mode of political mobilization: connecting heterogeneous grievances through a shared identity that challenges established authority without necessarily seeking electoral power. This differs from Mudde’s (2004) definition of populism as a thin-centered ideology dividing society between a virtuous people and a corrupt elite. CJP does not consistently demonstrate that moral division. It is therefore more useful to examine its populist mode of political articulation than to assign it a fixed ideological label.
The relevant distinction is between the construction of a popular identity and the institutions through which that identity is subsequently represented.
When a Name Becomes a Political People
Photo: Screenshot from CJP website.
CJP’s most distinctive political innovation may be its name. Following a controversy involving Chief Justice Surya Kant’s use of the term cockroaches, activists appropriated the expression and transformed it into a symbol of citizens refusing to be dismissed by powerful institutions (Reuters, 2026b). Unlike conventional party identities, cockroaches carry no defined ideological programme. Its ambiguity is its political strength. Students concerned about examination irregularities and citizens questioning electoral administration can identify with the same movement without sharing a comprehensive political ideology. CJP’s transition from examination protests in July to electoral-roll disputes in October illustrates this process. Different institutional controversies became connected through a common accusation of unresponsiveness to ordinary citizens.
In Laclau’s (2005) terms, these demands form a chain of equivalence. Their distinct concerns acquire collective meaning through opposition to an establishment perceived as insufficiently accountable. CJP thus offers a qualified example of populism without a conventional populist figure at its center. Dipke remains a prominent leader, but the movement’s identity is not reducible to his personality. The cockroach symbol performs part of the unifying function often associated with charismatic leadership. Yet symbolic unity has limits. A shared identity can mobilize citizens around grievances, but it cannot determine which demands should prevail, who should negotiate or what constitutes an acceptable political settlement.
The problem of representation emerges precisely where popular identification must become collective decision-making.
Political Victories and the Legitimacy of Leadership
CJP’s July negotiations make this contradiction visible. Its spokespersons, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, negotiated with Union Ministers J. P. Nadda and Jitendra Singh over examination reforms, compensation and withdrawal of cases against protesters. The negotiations preceded government concessions and the conclusion of the agitation (The Hitavada, 2026).
The movement had mobilized through a broad popular identity, but achieving a settlement required identifiable representatives to interpret demands and participate in decisions affecting the wider collective. Scharpf’s (1999) distinction between input legitimacy, derived from participation and procedures, and output legitimacy, derived from performance, offers a useful analogy. Political victories can strengthen confidence in representatives even when the processes authorizing them remain less visible.
This does not establish that CJP’s negotiators lacked a democratic mandate. Public reporting provides insufficient evidence about its internal procedures. The episode nevertheless demonstrates how political effectiveness and representative accountability raise different questions.
October 2026 presented another institutional setting. CJP demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over electoral-roll revisions. Unlike an elected minister, the Chief Election Commissioner occupies a constitutionally protected office intended to function independently of government. The Election Commission rejected allegations of political bias (Reuters, 2026).
Police restrictions and repeated detentions complicated the protests. Das and Ranka were detained on October 13 and subsequently remanded to judicial custody, which was extended by two days on October 19 (Jha, 2026; Mathur, 2026). Dipke was detained again ahead of an October 16 demonstration (Reuters, 2026).
Anticipating detention earlier on October 10, Dipke had designated Ajinkya Shinde, CJP’s organization in-charge, to lead the protest through a pre-recorded video (India Today, 2026). Shinde himself was subsequently detained alongside Das and Ranka, although he was later released (Jha, 2026). The succession arrangement demonstrated preparation rather than organizational failure. Yet publicly visible leadership authority was conferred through the founder’s designation, rather than a participant-led process identifiable in available reporting.
July demonstrated the movement’s negotiating influence; October exposed the practical importance of leadership continuity. Neither episode proves that CJP is internally undemocratic. Together, however, they raise the question of how representative authority is constituted beyond political victories and individual prominence.
Freeman’s (1972) The Tyranny of Structurelessness provides an important caution: rejecting formal hierarchy does not eliminate power; it can make its exercise less visible. For CJP, the democratic question is not whether leaders should exist, but whether participants can meaningfully influence and hold them accountable.
A Watchdog, Not Another Political Party?
Must successful protest movements eventually enter electoral politics? India’s anti-corruption movement of 2011 confronted this dilemma. One section eventually formed the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012, concluding that institutional reform required participation in electoral competition. CJP has chosen a different course, at least for now.
Its demands concern accountability rather than governmental power. Ministerial resignations, examination reforms and electoral scrutiny are claims directed at public authorities, not proposals to govern in their place. Rosanvallon’s (2008) concept of counter-democracy offers a useful framework. He argues that citizens exercise democratic influence beyond elections through oversight, prevention and judgment. CJP can therefore be understood not as an incomplete political party, but as a potential institution of civic vigilance.
International experiences demonstrate different possibilities. Kenyan protesters secured the withdrawal of a finance bill without entering government (Reuters, 2024). Some organizers of Bangladesh’s student uprising subsequently established the National Citizen Party (Reuters, 2025). In Nepal, the political opening following youth protests was channeled through elections, with the Rastriya Swatantra Party winning 182 of 275 parliamentary seats in March 2026 (Sharma, 2026).
These contrasting trajectories demonstrate that protest mobilization has no predetermined institutional destination. Remaining outside electoral politics is not necessarily a weakness; it can represent a different means of exercising democratic influence. But civic vigilance carries its own responsibility. Unlike electoral parties, which seek mandates from voters, movements derive legitimacy from public participation, credibility and their ability to articulate collective demands. When a small group negotiates on behalf of a wider constituency, the accountability of that representation becomes consequential. A movement scrutinizing public authority must also confront the question of accountability within itself.
Beyond the Populist Moment
CJP’s significance extends beyond its immediate political victories. It illustrates how a shared symbol can connect fragmented grievances and construct a political constituency without the machinery of an established party.
For populism studies, the case suggests the importance of looking beyond exclusively leader-centered accounts of mobilization. A shared name can perform the unifying work often associated with a charismatic figure, but symbolic identification alone cannot authorize decisions or resolve competing demands. This is the central tension of CJP’s experiment. Its political identity is constructed collectively, while the exercise of authority necessarily involves representatives whose legitimacy must be established and sustained.
A movement is tested not only on the day thousands arrive, but also on the day its leaders cannot. CJP has demonstrated that a shared identity can bring people together without a party. Its more demanding democratic test is whether those people can exercise meaningful authority over the politics conducted in their name.
(*) Saurabh Raj is a core team member at the Indian School of Democracy and a contributor to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). His work focuses on political leadership, democratic institutions and governance in India.
Gerbaudo, P. (2023). “From Occupy Wall Street to the Gilets Jaunes: On the populist turn in the protest movements of the 2010s.” Capital & Class, 47(1), 107–124.https://doi.org/10.1177/03098168221137207
Rosanvallon, P. (2008). Counter-democracy: Politics in an age of distrust (A. Goldhammer, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511755835
In this Voice of Youth (VoY) commentary, Filippo Palmieri examines a critical blind spot in the European Union’s democratic resilience agenda: how political parties select their candidates. Drawing on Italy’s new electoral law and comparative research on political recruitment, Palmieri argues that protecting elections from foreign interference, disinformation, and financial manipulation is insufficient if candidate selection remains opaque and concentrated in party leaderships. Comparing recruitment practices among Italy’s major populist parties, he demonstrates that political turnover does not necessarily indicate democratic renewal. Rather than advocating EU intervention in internal party affairs, Palmieri proposes greater transparency, comparative research, and national reporting requirements to strengthen political accountability and democratic resilience.
On October 8, 2026, the Italian Chamber of Deputies gave final approval to a new electoral law, published the next day as Law No. 180 and in force from October 24. Seats will be allocated proportionally, with a bonus for any list or coalition that wins 42 percent of the vote. In each multi-member district, parties will present lists of seven names, and voters may express up to three preferences among the last six. The first name is fixed by the party and has first claim on any seat the list wins. The 70 bonus seats in the Chamber go to candidates on separate lists, all of whom are elected if the bonus is triggered. When Italians next vote, expected in 2027, a significant part of the choice will have been made by whoever compiles the lists.
European resilience policy says little about that stage, and one rule marks the boundary with unusual precision. Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2025/2445 on European political parties and foundations, in force since December 2025, counts among the tasks of European political foundations “capacity building to support the formation of future political leaders in the Union.” Article 27(2), which bars foundations from funding elections, parties or candidates, allows them to train people “up to the date on which they become a candidate in accordance with national rules or up to the date of their nomination in the national party, whichever is earlier.”
The rule concerns funding, and the line it draws is legitimate: candidate selection is a matter for national law and for parties, and the ban keeps European money out of national campaigns. But it shows where European attention stops. The instruments examined below, the core of the Union’s resilience agenda, protect parties from interference and regulate their money; none of them asks how parties decide who will govern, a function whose results vary with how parties are organized.
Protect, Regulate, Train
The European Democracy Shield, presented by the European Commission and the High Representative on November 12, 2025, mentions political parties in a single section, on the fairness and integrity of electoral processes. There they appear in connection with foreign interference, party financing, a level playing field among competitors and voluntary commitments on the responsible use of artificial intelligence; candidates appear chiefly as people whose safety needs protecting. The section on civic participation relies on citizens’ panels, civic technology and civil society organizations, and parties do not feature in it.
The European Centre for Democratic Resilience, which began its work in February 2026, is designed to detect threats, coordinate early warnings and counter disinformation and foreign information manipulation. The Commission’s 2023 Recommendation on inclusive and resilient electoral processes comes closest to the inner life of parties, asking them to encourage gender balance on their electoral lists. On how candidates are chosen, it says nothing.
An early assessment of the Shield on Verfassungsblog observed that its focus on external threats tends to obscure the domestic sources of democratic weakness. Parties belong to what Jan-Werner Müller has called democracy’s “critical infrastructure,” and selection is the part of that infrastructure that produces the people who will run institutions.
Why Selection Matters
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt describe parties as gatekeepers whose task is to keep would-be authoritarians away from power. Much of that gatekeeping happens when candidates are chosen. The evidence suggests parties can select well when they have reasons to. Working with Swedish population registers, Ernesto Dal Bó and colleagues found that politicians score above the population they represent on the cognitive and leadership tests taken by men at military conscription, and that selection on ability is stronger where electoral competition is more intense. In Italy, Vincenzo Galasso and Tommaso Nannicini showed that between 1994 and 2001, when most seats were won in single-member districts, parties placed better-educated candidates with local government experience in the districts that either side could win. These studies show that incentives to select carefully matter. They do not show that long careers are better in themselves.
Procedure matters as well. Reuven Hazan and Gideon Rahat’s comparative study of candidate selection shows that methods trade participation, representation, competition and responsiveness against one another, and that narrow selectorates tend to produce more cohesive and disciplined groups. A more inclusive procedure is not better on every count. Writing about Italy, Piero Ignazi found parties largely closed to the decentralization of selection seen elsewhere in Europe, in some cases more centralized than before 1994, and warned that appeals to the membership over the heads of intermediate cadres introduce a plebiscitary dynamic.
Same Turnover, Different Careers
Italy’s 2018 election is usually told as a story about populism. The data on selection tell a more precise one. In the Chamber of Deputies, 65.9 percent of members had not sat in the previous legislature, almost the same share as in 2013 (65.5 percent), while electoral volatility was lower (26.7 against 36.7 percent). Eugenio Salvati and Michelangelo Vercesiconcluded that much of the renewal was decided before the vote, by party leaderships that controlled the drafting of lists.
The turnover rate hides who came in. The League, led by Matteo Salvini, renewed 87.8 percent of its group in the Chamber. Yet in a study of the new Chamber, Bruno Marino, Nicola Martocchia Diodati and Luca Verzichelli found an “extremely low” share of League deputies without any previous local, party or parliamentary position, against more than half of the Five-Star Movement’s. The Movement let enrolled members put themselves forward online, subject to a binding veto by its political leader, who also picked the candidates for single-member seats. Both parties are classified as populist in the PopuList, an expert-based database of populist, far-left and far-right parties in Europe.
A different indicator, measured after the 2022 election, points the same way. According to Openpolis, 81 percent of the League’s parliamentarians had served in local councils or executives, as had 68 percent of those of Brothers of Italy, the party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, also classified as populist. For the Five-Star Movement the figure was 22.5 percent. Parties that share the populist label can recruit in very different ways, and the label alone does not describe them.
What to Look For
None of this makes political experience a measure of democratic quality. A seasoned local administrator may depend entirely on a leader; a newcomer may widen representation. Biographies cannot settle the question. What matters for resilience is the process: whether nominations are transparent, whether they can be contested inside the party, how concentrated the power to nominate is, and how open candidacies are. These features decide to whom elected representatives owe their seats, and so whether they can act as a check on their own leadership.
What Could Be Done
This does not call for European rules on how parties pick their candidates. Three proposals follow, at different levels.
At the European level, the Commission has already used soft law on the composition of electoral lists when it encouraged gender balance in 2023. A future recommendation could invite Member States to make parties disclose how each candidate was chosen: by which body, under which rules, with what room for challenge.
Within the Union’s own structures, the Stakeholder Platform of the European Centre for Democratic Resilience is meant to bring researchers, academia and civil society into its work. Comparative research on candidate selection belongs there as much as research on disinformation.
At the national level, some rules already exist. Since 2013, Italian law has required parties seeking the “2 per mille,” a share of income tax that taxpayers can assign to a party, to set out in their statutes how they select candidates. The commission that reviews those statutes looks at their content: in 2021 it turned down the Five Star Movement’s request, and, according to the party, the changes it asked for included its rules on candidacies. Parliament could go further and require parties to report, after each election, how those procedures were applied. Under the new electoral law, such reports would tell voters who chose the names they cannot change.
Europe will pay to train a future Italian deputy until the day her party puts her name at the top of a list. What happens on that day is where its resilience policy goes quiet.
(*) Filippo Palmieri holds a master’s degree in International and Diplomatic Sciences, specializing in Politics and International Security, from the University of Bologna. His research focuses on democratic theory, populism, political representation, the transformation of political parties and the effects of digital communication on contemporary democracy. His master’s thesis examined the changing analytical value of the concept of populism in twenty-first-century democracies. He has presented research on democracy, populism and illiberalism at academic events hosted by the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, the Italian Political Science Association and Venice International University. Email: filippo.palmieri3@studio.unibo.it
This Voice of Youth (VoY) piece examines the growing influence of leader-centrism, political polarization, and digital mobilization on youth voting behavior in Pakistan. Drawing on a survey of 200 students from two major public universities in Lahore, Hamza Wyne identifies a pronounced shift from institutional party platforms toward personalized political loyalties. Findings reveal that 73.5% of respondents voted primarily because of party leadership, while 72% assign responsibility for political accountability to party leaders. Meanwhile, 68% follow political parties through social media, highlighting the expanding influence of digital political engagement alongside traditional mobilization. Deep ideological divisions persist, particularly regarding religious parties, with 38.5% opposing and 26.5% supporting religiously aligned voting. Against Pakistan’s substantial youth demographic, the study raises critical questions about charismatic leadership, democratic accountability, ideological fragmentation, and the future of electoral politics.
By Hafiz Hamza Wyne*
Across South Asia, young voters are increasingly shaping the frontiers of democratic survival and political polarization. In Pakistan, where university students represent a hyper-engaged and volatile demographic, understanding what drives electoral choices is critical to predicting the country’s political trajectory. Focusing on the metropolitan hub of Punjab Province, this study analyzes the behavioral and political determinants of public sector university students in Lahore.
The sites of the research are the public sector universities of Punjab, namely the University of the Punjab (PU) and Government College University (GCU). The two universities are among the big public sector universities of Lahore. About 200 respondents who voted in Pakistan’s general elections were included in this study. The survey method is used for this study due to its efficiency in collecting a broad range of data incorporating diverse responses. Data are gathered through a close-ended questionnaire, and a Likert scale is used to measure respondents’ attitudes based on the gathered data.
The findings reveal a stark reality: traditional party manifestos and institutional platforms are increasingly sidelined by a deeply personalized, leader-centric political culture. The youth potential in Pakistan is one of the highest, with 67% of Pakistan’s population under the age of 30. This translates into a voting pattern in which the number of young voters has drastically surged, making youth voters more important.
Prior research focuses on the social determinants of voting behavior in the province of Punjab, which were centered on rural and urban populations (Ahmad, 2012). It has failed to take into account a particular set of voters, namely university students, whom this piece intends to target and keenly analyze. This study focuses solely on students from two major government universities, with a focus on their beliefs and opinions, which stimulate them to vote for a particular political party.
Pakistan is a fragile democratic state. Since 1947, it has experienced three military takeovers, which show that it has a weak democracy. The stability of its political system depends on its massive youth bulge. Yet, a fundamental problem persists, while young citizens are mobilized, their engagement is taking place in an environment deeply polarized by narrative warfare. By analyzing how this student demographic processes electoral choices, we can observe whether higher education fosters institutional democratic stability or instead accelerates the personalization of political power. Political determinants are those factors that are politically motivated. In this study, the political determinants are electoral campaigns, party affiliation, and political ideology.
In a great part of Asia, caste or baradari (brotherhood), personality, and personal relations with candidates are the determinants of voting behavior (Akhter & Sheikh, 2014; Badshah et al., 2018). Of course, many voters still vote on an ideological basis. It could be religious, feminist, nationalist, socialist, or any other ideology. We have seen religious extremism not just in the form of pressure groups, but these groups are so strong that they are now forming governments in different countries, as we can see in India, the biggest democracy in the world (D’Ambrogio, 2014).
Demographic Segments / Generation Z and Household Profiles of Urban Punjab: 70.5 percent of the sampled population falls directly within the 20-to-23 age range. Academic stratification across the sample spans from undergraduate BS tracks (90 percent) to advanced M.Phil (7 percent) and PhD levels (3 percent), reflecting a broad cross-spectrum consensus. Although the dataset includes representation from students native to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, the majority—92 percent—reside in Punjab, ensuring the study’s high generalizability across the province.
The Mediatized Campaign / Digital Echo Chambers and Populist Rhetoric: Modern campaigns in Pakistan function as mediatized spheres. This study demonstrates that traditional public mobilization still retains weight; 54 percent of surveyed students follow political rallies to directly decide their votes, while 56.5 percent (combining the agree and strongly agree options) explicitly read and evaluate official party manifestos before casting their ballots. Over 56.5 percent of students declare a strong emotional affinity for specific party slogans (such as “Corruption ka Khatma (End of Corruption),” “Tabdeeli (Change),” or “Sher (Lion)”), proving that punchy, populist rhetoric plays a key role in youth movements. A whopping 68 percent of respondents actively followed their preferred political parties online.
Leader-Centrism, Ideological Rifts, and Accountability: In present times, people remain connected with their parties through social media and consume their party’s narrative. Our observations also assert the cardinal role that the party leader plays in increasing followership and garnering support for his own party. A large proportion, amounting to 73.5% of the students, had voted for a political party because of its leader. The leader, as a centralized figure, is reckoned to be an indispensable part of the political party. But youth loyalty is far from blind; it is highly conditional. A whole 72% of voters consider holding the party leadership accountable to be the responsibility of the leadership itself.
Similarly, deep-seated ideological fragmentation exists. About 26.5% agree and 38.5% disagree when it comes to voting for a religious party. While a single leader can temporarily unite a youth movement under one banner, the urban youth demographic remains deeply fractured beneath the surface.
Conclusion
The findings suggest that youth voting behavior in Pakistan is increasingly shaped by charismatic leadership, digital engagement, and ideological polarization. While leader-centric politics dominates electoral choices, young voters also emphasize political accountability, indicating that their loyalty is not unconditional. The coexistence of personalized political allegiances, social media influence, and ideological divisions raises important questions about democratic consolidation. In sum, Pakistan’s democratic future will depend partly on whether its expanding youth electorate moves beyond charismatic leadership toward greater institutional accountability, substantive political engagement, and more inclusive democratic participation.
(*) Hafiz Hamza Wyneis a Pakistan-based empirical political researcher. His research focuses on youth political participation, electoral behavior, leader-centric politics, and political polarization, with particular emphasis on the dynamics of democratic engagement in Pakistan.
References
Ahmad, M. (2012). “Voting behaviour in rural and urban areas of Punjab.” Journal of Political Studies, 14, 45-56.
Akhter, Z. & Sheikh, Y. A. (2014). “Determinants of voting behaviour in India: Theoretical perspective.” Public Policy Administration Research, 4(8), 104-108.
Badshah, L.; Rehman, A. U. & Muhammad, N. (2018). “Political determinants of voting behaviour in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.” Liberal Arts and Social Sciences International Journal, 2(1), 1-10.
D’Ambrogio, E. (2014). “India: The biggest democracy in the world.” European Parliamentary Research Service.
